This blog serves my Congress course (Claremont McKenna College Government 101) for the spring of 2018.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

I shall post videos, graphs, news stories, and other material there. We shall use some of this material in class, and you may review the rest at your convenience. You will all receive invitations to post to the blog. (Please let me know if you do not get such an invitation.) I encourage you to use the blog in these ways:

To post questions or comments about the readings before we discuss them in class;To follow up on class discussions with additional comments or questions.To post relevant news items or videos.

There are only two major limitations: no coarse language, and no derogatory comments about people at the Claremont Colleges.

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Sunday, April 10, 2011

Rush to Save Projects Back Home During Budget Battle

Ask a member of Congress what they think of earmarks and most will resoundingly agree that superfluous earmarks and pork barrel projects are bad and should be curbed - except for the ones going towards their district.

An article published in the New York Timesnear the end of last week's budget battle describes the challenges that House GOP members are faced with as they try to pare down the budget while preserving funds needed for projects back home.

The Republican budget bill also called for cutting a type of popular transportation grant. Since the cut was proposed, there has been an apparent rush to get work going on projects financed by the grants to keep them from being ended by any budget-cutting deal agreed to by the two parties and the White House. Consider the case of the Memorial Bridge, which stretches over the Piscataqua River between Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Me. The aging bridge, in ill repair, was set to receive $20 million in transportation grants.

But Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, and Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Representative Frank Guinta of New Hampshire — all Republicans who voted for the Republican spending-cut bill that slashed the grant program — worked to ensure that the bridge project would receive the financing, according to staff members from several of their offices.